Well, that isn't quite as it should be. Distribution is much more important than you make it out to be. Your favorite artist -- how did you hear about him/her? There is TONS of crap out there. How do you find the diamonds? You do not have the time to sift through all the garbage. And I think you're wrong about production -- if you can't draw a return from copyright, you can't capture any value off the production, only the easily copiable performance.
See this is what everyone has wrong in the US.
New bands should rise to the top via the music press or radio DJs who make it their job to find the diamonds from the TONS of music being produced. Like the British music press and John Peel of the BBC.
In the US, all the print and radio and TV are held by the same companies that produce music that they dictate what gets hyped. This creates a very unnatural situation.
Call me old or jaded but compared to the British, the American music scene hardly produces any new bands that rise from the some local scene somewhere. It's all filled with prepackaged, market-directed music more than usual. A lot of American bands actually seem to get their start in the British press rather than the US.
And here's another theory: the educational establishment was taken over, in the 50's and 60's, by a mindset of soft science, of teaching maths by letting kids play, rather than force-feeding them 2000 years of hard-won maths theory; by teaching grammar by letting kids play, rather than teaching them to speak and write accurately. The educational establishment (so goes this theory) is lazy and scared of hard science, especially biology, because it risks overturning five decades of dogma that say, "we're all born equal, only society makes us different". He who controls the classrooms today controls the future.
Another thing that really makes me mad is the softening up via privacy rules.
If you flunk a test, only you and the teacher know about it. You can't let boys fail in private! That completely kills the entire spirit of competition that boys thrive on. (my personal theory also for part of the reason why girls are completely outpacing boys in academics in the lower levels of education).
If you spark the competitive spirit in a class (not just inside a class but on a larget scale), then the students will be screaming at the teachers to teach them properly or just leave them so they cna learn the stuff themselves.
First of all, intellegence is not one dimensional. How do you say someone or something is smarter than someone else unless you use a scale that turns it into 1 dimension (e.g. IQ test).
Second, whose brain is made for information processing (whatever meaning that is)? Human brains can process language and certain visual stimulus like faces very well but it's not very good information processing since it can't remember anything correctly and can't do simple mathematical operations correctly. Plus, dogs have better sound and smell processing to go with the hardware/"wetware".
I'm sorry, but that sounds really stupid. What are you saying exactly? You're scared that you're too weak to resist buying something if they market it to you really well, and it's really appropriate for you? Therefore you don't want them to advertise? You're in control of your buying decisions; you can't go saying that others can't try to influence you in a free society.
Why do people deny human nature?
You probably think salespeople don't influence you or that TV ads doesn't affect you. Corporations spend a lot of money on advertising and the advertising campaigns of movies are sometimes over half what the movie cost itself to make.
The fact is advertising works really really well.
I've heard of people say they are addicted to slashdot. There is no reason why Google can't make you addicted through content generated based on your profile so you keep reading on and discussing and eventually spend an enormous money on.
There are limits to influencing sales. Take for example, subliminal advertising in movies - which is BANNED !- few frames of a product that you won't remember seeing but your brain will see it and remember it. For other examples door to door salesman and telemarketing calls. There have been laws passed in regards to those.
There is a line that can be crossed that is advertising in a free society and inethical manupulation. And, Google may have the oppertunity to exploit a form of advertising that I think would be overly manipulative by storing and mining all the personal data.
I think you've fallen into the trap of anthromorphosizing Google.
Google isn't a guy who lives down the street and has a specific character and you can depend on him to hold on to your secrets.
The leaders of the google has a policy and all but in reality it has stockholders and is traded on the stock market. People can retire, be fired or replaced but Google is still there.
Saying something like I trust Google doesn't make sense. If there is an oppertunity to sucessfully exploit for money then you can safely bet Google will do it eventually.
I remember Microsoft in the early days. Everyone considered Bill Gates a genuis. A reporter even asked him if he thought he should have gone to Physics instead of starting Microsoft? People thought he was so brilliant and genuis. It didn't take long for Microsoft to exploit their powers and become evil since no-one could do anything about it.
I think the search engine can be specialized. Google search is through everything. If I'm doing C++ coding, then a search through only C++ and related content in the web should be enough. It's not powerful as google but then you don't need massive amount of storage and bandwidth.
If open source search code exists, then a C++ website could index all the C++ topics and put up a search. A small server would be able to handle it.
Most of the time I feel like I'm using google instead of a site's own search feature. If I want to find an old article on slashdot, then it's next to impossible to find it with slashdot's own search engine. I have to use google for it.
Even if open source search program gives every site their own good search engine then it would cut down on the number of google searches and google logging all your data.
I think the future model will probably be like phpBB. Anyone with a website can set one up in 10 minutes and so your information is scattered all over the web. Google is bad since it's in centralized Google but there are million copies of phpBB will their own posts everywhere.
Also,if it's going to be stored on someone else's computer, then it has to be encrypted! There is no reason to store unencrypted documents on Google servers.
We're not talking about individual pieces of information here. It's a collection of information from various sources that are available to be mined.
Google will know who you talk to, where you spend your money, where you spend your time and what you talk about and do. Now, also the documents you work on.
Just from a couple of posts on slashdot, I can see you either own iPod or use iTunes extensively. I'm sure you will be very interested in a detailed review when a new iPod comes out. You said you are buying the Wii in a post. And, I'm just human. A machine can make a list of all the things you plan to buy or check out and direct you to reviews, discussions, blogs about them that makes you want to buy them more.
Seriously, since I heard about Google's infinite retention policy, I'm even afraid of using google search anymore. For the simpler stuff I use other search engines. Half the pages I go to have Google ads and by using gmail and google groups, they've got a lot of information on me.
The last last thing I want to do is use Google to edit my documents.
It hasn't happened as much yet but soon I expect to go somewhere and see Google ads with very interesting (to me) titles. Then, I'll click and spend time on it and make me feel like I need to buy this or that.
Seriously, someone has to start an open-source project to write a super-duper search engine code so that websites can use it to search themselves. It's easier to use google to search through slashdot that to use the slashdot search feature (which sucks really bad by the way).
We have open source firefox and thunderbirld, we need open source code for searching.
I'm staying away from Google calendars and google what nots from now on due to privacy concerns.
There is a reason we have anti-discrimination laws.
It's not because of political correctness or care for fellow humans. It's our sort of insurance. Sure, it doesn't look like we could be on the wrong side of discrimination right now but what if something happens? What if you get discriminated for your age? Maybe a disease you picked up by eating somewhere? We have a law that says NO DISCRIMINATION period. Simple.
Now, we all know they're pretending they are checking everyone and going through the motions at the airport and all. An arab looking guy is going to get a little more equal checking than the rest of the passengers. But we all go along with the act since we'd like not to be discriminated against when a time like that springs up.
Criminals have all those rights because in case we are at the wrong place at the wrong time we have plenty of rights. Innocent until proven guilty and all.
To be fair, the author says data in blocks or "pages" from a computer's random access memory onto disk. This does describe swapping rather than paging and the page is in quotes.
The exact quote is His operating system also was a multiuser system. Even the mainframes of the day were limited to a single user, making computing time expensive.. I don't think you can say for sure it implies that Unix invented time-sharing. It might be taken to mean, "multics had timesharing and also so did unix"
Basically, sound insulation needs double or triple walls built of materials that are sound dampening at all frequencies, which means high mass. Building two ceilings and two walls of concrete or solid brick, plus a double layer of concrete floor that rests on high density urethane foam isn't cheap. And then you come to the acoustics part. All the above mentioned room needs to be big enough to have acceptable reverberation times. Or else the walls, ceiling, and floor need to have a thick layer of echo dampening material and the reverberation added digitally. Not cheap either.
That's probably a requirement for concert halls not probably not as strict for recording studios. A lot of instruments are closed miked and the cohesive room reverb is probably added in the mixing or mastering process.
Anyway, a basement of any house meets most of the requirements. Low celiling with insulation, thick walls on the bottom and sides. Insulation boards with good acoustic can be had for cheap.
Plus, listening to some of the music that's out today, I even doubt there is any actual mic recording except for voice involved.
The error in the media and software industries is that they forgot capitalism and the free market and tried to invent their own rules. Their prices aren't based on the traditional formulas, they are trying to price their products based on the extreme outliers. If anybody at all is willing to pay $25 for a CD they assume that's the right price for all CDs.
Capitalism doesn't imply here since record companies are granted monopoly via copyright.
What would you have the government do? The media has already handcuffed them with the help of paticular interest groups from doing what is truly effective, profiling. So whats left? Simple, inconvienence EVERYONE. After all its "only fair". Hence my mother gets harrased trying to board flights with her dog. One day some of ya'll are going to grow up and realize that "the man" isn't out to get you. He is out to get the bad guy and the real problem is that the most effective ways are denied to him because of political correctness.
No it's not political correctness or whatever that means in this context, it's based on the assumption that absolute power always corrupts. If there are no checks and balances, even the good guys with lots of power will use the power in evil ways. So, giving all that power to fight evil then creates evil itself. It's basic human nature, you can deny it all you want but unchecked and controlled power always corrupts.
The truth is that there is a group of people out there who only want to kill. You are no more an individual target of their aspirations as you are no more the direct target of restrictions of what you are allowed to take on a plane with you. These people don't care. The fact that they are willing to die to kill others means that we going to suffer some extraordinary restrictions just to make sure they don't get the chance. You want to blame someone, blame them. I know, its far easier to blame our government and Bush (in fact its popular among some segments) but the truth is that they didn't create this enemy. Its been around a long time. Time and technology have given them a means to hit people other than in their home areas.
honestly, what would you expect of your government with regards to this situation? There is no reasonable defense that will work against an unreasonable enemy. The sooner that is acknowleged the sooner many will realize just what a major problem it truly is.
That reminds of those Japanese horror movie ghosts that have all sort of powers that defy any sort of limits or pattern.
Back to the point, there is always a motive and pattern to every human action. The more people and more money gets involved, the more basic it becomes. It's understanable to have fear of the unknown but you're giving it very infinite power in your mind.
It is spread by tumor cells getting passed from dog to dog through sex or from animals biting or licking each other. Robin Weiss and his colleagues did genetic studies on the tumor cells from 40 dogs with Sticker's sarcoma, collected from five continents, which showed that all the tumor cells are clones of each other.
So, all tumor cells are clones of each other and not related to the dog. How is this cancer? Isn't it just a regular pathogen then?
What's new here is whether we let them get away with it. "It" being the use of negative campaigning as a means to deceive the uninformed audience.
Politicians have huge staffs working around the clock trying to figure out ways around the system and deal with all the consequences regarding every seeable consequences. Unless it's your job, it's impossible to follow, make sense and keep track of it all.
There is opportunity here to inform the cow-like public that they are being manipulated by assholes. US elections have become a race among liars and crooks. Time to demand better, partly by taking responsibility for one's own role in the process.
Why even bother. As soon as you say that, we all know which party you're going to vote for come next election time.
If enough of us take the time to care about the social quality of the candidate, we can have a system of honest, compassionate, competent people who are in it because they want us all to do well. A rising tide floats all boats: the greater the common good (ocean), the greater the individual good (your boat).
As somebody said, "great idea, wrong species." We're not friggin ants. We'll be as communistic and socialistic when it comes to family but outside that it doesn't work that way.
The only way to have long-term generational success is to ensure we make sure everyone has the opportunity for good health, good education, good standards, and good safety.
The only way for this to happen is that both sides should do as much dirty tricks as possible to get votes. This way both of them cancel each other's advantage out and the public in the end decides who to elect.
I've worked with so many bands to know that is probably not true.
I mean for people who aren't trying to peddle their own music of their band in this crazy crazy world, everything looks a lot different.
But a lot of bands they got into the studio and they get a CD of their record after they pay $xx to the studio. Now, most people just rip with iTunes and send out files from there for other people. I've had so much trouble telling people where the damn iTunes stores the files to send me their song.
Plus, if you have two people who aren't familair with how iTunes works and trying to swap each other band's music, forget about it. That's a painful experience.
I've always wondered that if iTunes was open source like Mozilla, it would definatly have a send song to feature. Like you could send a song over from your iTunes to somebody else's iTunes. It would benefit a lot of independent bands. Trying to get someone to put your music on their iTunes through the web is amazingly strong deterrent and you can't opt for free downloads via ITMS.
Long story short, someday there will be a Mozilla like iTunes clone that will do what people want and not if we implement this the record companies are going to be mad at us...
That's because windows supports both AMD and Intel architechtures in windows. They may both be x86 but all the enchancements they've done for optimizations are really different - like multimedia instructions, pipelining stuff are probably all different. So there is probably a little bit more involved in supporting AMD CPUs.
Oh, wait. Hitler wanted to kill Einstein as he was a Jew. So we should also check Isreal as well.
I sort of think the bigger brain, smarter person is a bit of a myth about progress in science. Scientific development always happens in clusters. The Persians were leading mathematicians at one time but it's been a few hundred years since a single significant result came out there (which would contradict the bigger brains lead to discovery ideas).
I think scientific research is more of a ant-like scouting party. You send all your scouts in different directions and if you have enough scouts, one will signal that they found something. Maybe it's just about pushing through enough researchers in the field?
Someone did the math awhile ago, I can't find the link, but you're just plain wrong. The Mac is maybe $50 or $100 more than a comparable PC. And you'll be repurchasing software with Vista anyhow -- or living through the hell of the security dialogs.
Actually, one of the things about Apple products is that they are almost always excluded from a store sale (10% of everything kind of sale) and rarely go on sale via coupons or mail in rebates. On the other hand, Dell and Compaq stuff have a slew of online coupons, mail in rebates etc etc always out there that the price difference is huge.
I was astounded that someone got a $2000 Apple laptop over a $800 Dell laptop that had similar specs. Yes, the Dell was originally $1600 - 35% off - $300 off or what not to get to $800.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure flying is cheaper but you know, ... being Clark Kent one can't be seem flying around.
See this is what everyone has wrong in the US.
New bands should rise to the top via the music press or radio DJs who make it their job to find the diamonds from the TONS of music being produced. Like the British music press and John Peel of the BBC.
In the US, all the print and radio and TV are held by the same companies that produce music that they dictate what gets hyped. This creates a very unnatural situation.
Call me old or jaded but compared to the British, the American music scene hardly produces any new bands that rise from the some local scene somewhere. It's all filled with prepackaged, market-directed music more than usual. A lot of American bands actually seem to get their start in the British press rather than the US.
I love the animated series.
Remember that one where Kirk meets the devil.
The sort of thesis that came out of it was that there is no good and evil; just something else. I wonder how that fits with ancient mythology.
Until Voyager came along ...
Another thing that really makes me mad is the softening up via privacy rules.
If you flunk a test, only you and the teacher know about it. You can't let boys fail in private! That completely kills the entire spirit of competition that boys thrive on. (my personal theory also for part of the reason why girls are completely outpacing boys in academics in the lower levels of education).
If you spark the competitive spirit in a class (not just inside a class but on a larget scale), then the students will be screaming at the teachers to teach them properly or just leave them so they cna learn the stuff themselves.
First of all, intellegence is not one dimensional. How do you say someone or something is smarter than someone else unless you use a scale that turns it into 1 dimension (e.g. IQ test).
Second, whose brain is made for information processing (whatever meaning that is)? Human brains can process language and certain visual stimulus like faces very well but it's not very good information processing since it can't remember anything correctly and can't do simple mathematical operations correctly. Plus, dogs have better sound and smell processing to go with the hardware/"wetware".
Why do people deny human nature?
You probably think salespeople don't influence you or that TV ads doesn't affect you. Corporations spend a lot of money on advertising and the advertising campaigns of movies are sometimes over half what the movie cost itself to make.
The fact is advertising works really really well.
I've heard of people say they are addicted to slashdot. There is no reason why Google can't make you addicted through content generated based on your profile so you keep reading on and discussing and eventually spend an enormous money on.
There are limits to influencing sales. Take for example, subliminal advertising in movies - which is BANNED !- few frames of a product that you won't remember seeing but your brain will see it and remember it. For other examples door to door salesman and telemarketing calls. There have been laws passed in regards to those.
There is a line that can be crossed that is advertising in a free society and inethical manupulation. And, Google may have the oppertunity to exploit a form of advertising that I think would be overly manipulative by storing and mining all the personal data.
I think you've fallen into the trap of anthromorphosizing Google.
Google isn't a guy who lives down the street and has a specific character and you can depend on him to hold on to your secrets.
The leaders of the google has a policy and all but in reality it has stockholders and is traded on the stock market. People can retire, be fired or replaced but Google is still there.
Saying something like I trust Google doesn't make sense. If there is an oppertunity to sucessfully exploit for money then you can safely bet Google will do it eventually.
I remember Microsoft in the early days. Everyone considered Bill Gates a genuis. A reporter even asked him if he thought he should have gone to Physics instead of starting Microsoft? People thought he was so brilliant and genuis. It didn't take long for Microsoft to exploit their powers and become evil since no-one could do anything about it.
I think the search engine can be specialized. Google search is through everything. If I'm doing C++ coding, then a search through only C++ and related content in the web should be enough. It's not powerful as google but then you don't need massive amount of storage and bandwidth.
If open source search code exists, then a C++ website could index all the C++ topics and put up a search. A small server would be able to handle it.
Most of the time I feel like I'm using google instead of a site's own search feature. If I want to find an old article on slashdot, then it's next to impossible to find it with slashdot's own search engine. I have to use google for it.
Even if open source search program gives every site their own good search engine then it would cut down on the number of google searches and google logging all your data.
I think the future model will probably be like phpBB. Anyone with a website can set one up in 10 minutes and so your information is scattered all over the web. Google is bad since it's in centralized Google but there are million copies of phpBB will their own posts everywhere.
Also,if it's going to be stored on someone else's computer, then it has to be encrypted! There is no reason to store unencrypted documents on Google servers.
We're not talking about individual pieces of information here. It's a collection of information from various sources that are available to be mined.
Google will know who you talk to, where you spend your money, where you spend your time and what you talk about and do. Now, also the documents you work on.
Just from a couple of posts on slashdot, I can see you either own iPod or use iTunes extensively. I'm sure you will be very interested in a detailed review when a new iPod comes out. You said you are buying the Wii in a post. And, I'm just human. A machine can make a list of all the things you plan to buy or check out and direct you to reviews, discussions, blogs about them that makes you want to buy them more.
Seriously, since I heard about Google's infinite retention policy, I'm even afraid of using google search anymore. For the simpler stuff I use other search engines. Half the pages I go to have Google ads and by using gmail and google groups, they've got a lot of information on me.
The last last thing I want to do is use Google to edit my documents.
It hasn't happened as much yet but soon I expect to go somewhere and see Google ads with very interesting (to me) titles. Then, I'll click and spend time on it and make me feel like I need to buy this or that.
Seriously, someone has to start an open-source project to write a super-duper search engine code so that websites can use it to search themselves. It's easier to use google to search through slashdot that to use the slashdot search feature (which sucks really bad by the way).
We have open source firefox and thunderbirld, we need open source code for searching.
I'm staying away from Google calendars and google what nots from now on due to privacy concerns.
You're talking about openly discriminating here.
There is a reason we have anti-discrimination laws.
It's not because of political correctness or care for fellow humans. It's our sort of insurance. Sure, it doesn't look like we could be on the wrong side of discrimination right now but what if something happens? What if you get discriminated for your age? Maybe a disease you picked up by eating somewhere? We have a law that says NO DISCRIMINATION period. Simple.
Now, we all know they're pretending they are checking everyone and going through the motions at the airport and all. An arab looking guy is going to get a little more equal checking than the rest of the passengers. But we all go along with the act since we'd like not to be discriminated against when a time like that springs up.
Criminals have all those rights because in case we are at the wrong place at the wrong time we have plenty of rights. Innocent until proven guilty and all.
To be fair, the author says data in blocks or "pages" from a computer's random access memory onto disk. This does describe swapping rather than paging and the page is in quotes.
The exact quote is His operating system also was a multiuser system. Even the mainframes of the day were limited to a single user, making computing time expensive.. I don't think you can say for sure it implies that Unix invented time-sharing. It might be taken to mean, "multics had timesharing and also so did unix"
That's probably a requirement for concert halls not probably not as strict for recording studios. A lot of instruments are closed miked and the cohesive room reverb is probably added in the mixing or mastering process.
Anyway, a basement of any house meets most of the requirements. Low celiling with insulation, thick walls on the bottom and sides. Insulation boards with good acoustic can be had for cheap.
Plus, listening to some of the music that's out today, I even doubt there is any actual mic recording except for voice involved.
Capitalism doesn't imply here since record companies are granted monopoly via copyright.
No it's not political correctness or whatever that means in this context, it's based on the assumption that absolute power always corrupts. If there are no checks and balances, even the good guys with lots of power will use the power in evil ways. So, giving all that power to fight evil then creates evil itself. It's basic human nature, you can deny it all you want but unchecked and controlled power always corrupts.
That reminds of those Japanese horror movie ghosts that have all sort of powers that defy any sort of limits or pattern.
Back to the point, there is always a motive and pattern to every human action. The more people and more money gets involved, the more basic it becomes. It's understanable to have fear of the unknown but you're giving it very infinite power in your mind.
So, all tumor cells are clones of each other and not related to the dog. How is this cancer? Isn't it just a regular pathogen then?
That's the whole point of the media PC; to play whatever format. Otherwise they'd all be in the DVD format and your DVD player could play it.
Who cares? Everyone spends 99.9% of their time in Firefox and Thunderbird which looks the same everywhere.
However, will that girl be impressed if you don't have the apple logo on your laptop?
Politicians have huge staffs working around the clock trying to figure out ways around the system and deal with all the consequences regarding every seeable consequences. Unless it's your job, it's impossible to follow, make sense and keep track of it all.
Why even bother. As soon as you say that, we all know which party you're going to vote for come next election time.
As somebody said, "great idea, wrong species." We're not friggin ants. We'll be as communistic and socialistic when it comes to family but outside that it doesn't work that way.
The only way for this to happen is that both sides should do as much dirty tricks as possible to get votes. This way both of them cancel each other's advantage out and the public in the end decides who to elect.
I've worked with so many bands to know that is probably not true.
I mean for people who aren't trying to peddle their own music of their band in this crazy crazy world, everything looks a lot different.
But a lot of bands they got into the studio and they get a CD of their record after they pay $xx to the studio. Now, most people just rip with iTunes and send out files from there for other people. I've had so much trouble telling people where the damn iTunes stores the files to send me their song.
Plus, if you have two people who aren't familair with how iTunes works and trying to swap each other band's music, forget about it. That's a painful experience.
I've always wondered that if iTunes was open source like Mozilla, it would definatly have a send song to feature. Like you could send a song over from your iTunes to somebody else's iTunes. It would benefit a lot of independent bands. Trying to get someone to put your music on their iTunes through the web is amazingly strong deterrent and you can't opt for free downloads via ITMS.
Long story short, someday there will be a Mozilla like iTunes clone that will do what people want and not if we implement this the record companies are going to be mad at us ...
That's because windows supports both AMD and Intel architechtures in windows. They may both be x86 but all the enchancements they've done for optimizations are really different - like multimedia instructions, pipelining stuff are probably all different. So there is probably a little bit more involved in supporting AMD CPUs.
Yes, maybe Hitler was right?
Oh, wait. Hitler wanted to kill Einstein as he was a Jew. So we should also check Isreal as well.
I sort of think the bigger brain, smarter person is a bit of a myth about progress in science. Scientific development always happens in clusters. The Persians were leading mathematicians at one time but it's been a few hundred years since a single significant result came out there (which would contradict the bigger brains lead to discovery ideas).
I think scientific research is more of a ant-like scouting party. You send all your scouts in different directions and if you have enough scouts, one will signal that they found something. Maybe it's just about pushing through enough researchers in the field?
Actually, one of the things about Apple products is that they are almost always excluded from a store sale (10% of everything kind of sale) and rarely go on sale via coupons or mail in rebates. On the other hand, Dell and Compaq stuff have a slew of online coupons, mail in rebates etc etc always out there that the price difference is huge.
I was astounded that someone got a $2000 Apple laptop over a $800 Dell laptop that had similar specs. Yes, the Dell was originally $1600 - 35% off - $300 off or what not to get to $800.
On the contary, I think this is an idea that many people wish wasn't feasable.